Go slow and think on U.S. role in Syria

Express-News Editorial Board

May 6, 2013Updated: May 6, 2013 4:32pm

Photo: Uriel Sinai, Getty Images

Israeli soldiers maintain tanks at a deployment area near the border with Syria on Monday. As the call for action against Syria grows in the U.S., recall the rush to war with Iraq and the consequences.

Israeli soldiers maintain tanks at a deployment area near the...

There are lessons available, learned the hard way, from U.S. combat involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Key among them is that a land war that involves U.S. boots on the ground in the Mideast or Asia is ill advised and fraught with unanticipated twists and turns that have unsettling “endings” (that never seem to end).

Opinion

The United States might start providing Syrian rebels with lethal arms.

It might start enforcing a no-fly zone over Syria or part of it, as refuge for those fleeing the violence that has claimed an estimated 70,000 lives over two years.

It might use the possibility that Assad's forces have used chemical weapons as leverage to pressure Russia to abandon the regime.

With U.S. involvement in Iraq substantively ended and Afghanistan winding down with a scheduled 2014 departure, the administration reportedly has no appetite for equally active involvement in Syria.

Those now depicting the president as weak-kneed because of this deliberate approach should recall the rush-to-bad-judgment in the walk-up to the Iraq War. And they should remember also the eyes-off-the-ball approach in Afghanistan, now the longest war in U.S. history.

Diplomacy, no-fly zones and lethal arms for the rebels are viable options, within limits and with international participation. Arms and no-fly zones in particular contain high risk and should be thought through. But beyond that, no.

In Military City USA, Syria is not just some esoteric issue. People here will go there if U.S. involvement escalates.

Go slow. And recall history so fresh that the ink is not even dry on the tally of cost in blood and treasure in those two wars.